Consultancy: Women's Unpaid Work in MENA

Terms of Reference for Research

Women’s unpaid work in MENA

BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE

Across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) women share of the work force remains the lowest worldwide with 15.8% in Jordan, 23.7% in Lebanon, 23,8% in Egypt and 25% in Tunisia, despite relative high levels of education of women compared to men. World Bank figures show that a percentage as high as 75 percent of women in MENA continue to be excluded from the labor market. However, evidence from a wide range of developing countries and in MENA, attests to the fact that women are increasingly entering the labor market. Yet despite little improvement in the past four decades in terms of female labor participation, women in MENA continue to perform a disproportionate amount and bear the brunt of unpaid care work. In fact, women increased labor participation into paid work has not been accompanied with a change in the gender division of unpaid labor in the domestic sphere. On the contrary, women continued to carry the double burden of paid and unpaid workloads. This burden is further complicated by social class. In poor rural and urban areas women work longer hours than men, spend more time on unpaid care work and subsistence agriculture, and have less time to engage in paid work and social and cultural activities. Moreover, because of prevalence of sexual division of labor within the public and the private spheres or what Valentina M. Moghadam (2013) calls the “patriarchal gender contract” (the social norm of men as breadwinners and women as wives and mothers), and the gendered impacts of neoliberal policies (privatizing of key institutions of social reproduction like education, health, and social services), unpaid domestic work in MENA continues to be undervalued compared to paid work and is ignored as “real” work.

Although this work is critical to the functioning of communities, and despite the dire ramifications of discounting it (on development, the overall quality of life and sustainability), yet it has been largely ignored by economic and social public policies. This is largely due to the failure in recognizing this unpaid labor’s economic value. The result has been the lack of national statistics and economic analysis on unpaid care work in the MENA region. This analysis is necessary to understand economic contributions and the impacts unpaid care work has on the lives of those who perform it and those who benefit from it; and by consequence the lack or quasi absence of support mechanisms and social provisions, whether from the state or the market, which would allow the recognition, the reduction and redistribution of unpaid care work.

In this context, Oxfam is commissioning a literature review on women’s unpaid care work in MENA. The research will identify major literature around unpaid care work in 4 countries: Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and Egypt; analyzing and synthesizing past research. The researcher will also identify gaps in knowledge and programming and make recommendations that offer support for new research that would be the basis of future programs on women’s economic empowerment in MENA.

The research will offer insights into why women’s responsibilities for unpaid care work remain intact even when they take up paid work; the level to which unpaid care work impacts the low rates of labor force participation of women situating this problematic within the overall economic structure in the concerned countries. Finally, the researcher will consider the global supply chain of care work which plays an important role in women’s labor force participation through shifting the burden of unpaid/low paid care work from citizens to migrant women.

The researcher will employ literature review methodology, reviewing existing Arabic, French and English literature and evidence on household division of labor, gendered patters of labor market, laws, macro social and economic policies, perceptions of unpaid care work, and the values and norms that underlie it in MENA. No primary data collection will be required.

TIMETABLE

Oxfam RGJP will issue an open call for application in early March 2018. Selected researcher is expected to start end of March. Completed research to be submitted end of April 2018.

1.OUTPUT 1 First draft proposal for conducting the literature review including research questions and methodology following a meeting with Oxfam.

DATE DUE 3 days from date of contract